Dunphy: The GOP will soon RIP

The Republican Party, founded in 1854 by high-minded Americans who were opposed to the expansion of slavery into our nation’s territories, is on life-support. It’s just a matter of time before it slips away to join the Federalists and Whigs in the Valhalla of our nation’s deceased political parties. When I posted this opinion on Facebook, several Republican loyalists vigorously expressed their disagreement. The GOP currently holds majorities in both the House and Senate, they pointed out. Thirty-two states have Republican governors as well. A party that has so many office-holders is surely in vigorously good health.

I beg to disagree and here’s why. In his article “The GOP Is Dying Off. Literally,” Daniel J. McGraw points out that “The Republican Party voter is old,” which means “far more Republicans than Democrats have died since the 2012 elections.” This situation is worsened by the fact that the GOP manages to attract few first-time voters. “Unless the party is able to make inroads with new voters,” McGraw observes, “the GOP’s slow demographic slide will continue election to election.” Millennials, defined here as those Americans born between 1981 and 1997, tend to identify with the Democratic Party, which hardly bodes well for the GOP, according to William Frey, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who specializes in demographic studies.

There was a time in our nation’s history when black voters overwhelmingly favored the Republican Party, which had been the party of choice for abolitionists. The Democratic Party in days past was dominated by Southern racists, who habitually opposed GOP-sponsored anti-lynching legislation. Political alignments were re-written in the 1960s, however, when 1964 GOP presidential nominee Barry Goldwater opposed that year’s landmark civil rights legislation. Racist voters in the Deep South abandoned the Democratic Party in droves to vote for Goldwater. This realignment continued in 1968 with Richard Nixon’s “Southern Strategy,” which betrayed the founding principles of the GOP by openly pandering to racist voters. The Southern Strategy twice elected Nixon to the presidency. It also worked well for Ronald Reagan in 1980 and 1984 since the Gipper, before ever seeking elective office, had publicly opposed both the 1964 Civil Rights Act as well as the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

The GOP’s reinvented identity as the party of choice for reactionary whites has now become a liability rather than an asset, however. William Greider wrote in The Nation, “After five decades of shrewd strategy, the Republican coalition Richard Nixon put together in 1968 – welcoming the segregationist white South into the Party of Lincoln – is now devouring itself in ugly, spiteful recriminations.” As Sean Illing points out in his column “R.I.P., GOP: Party of old, disillusioned white people is dying a slow death,” Greider was referring to House Speaker John Boehner’s resignation in response to the intransigence and fanaticism of the House Tea Party Caucus.

Illing explains how the GOP’s reputation as the White People’s Party now works against it. “As documented in the 2014 States of Change report….the percentage of white voters in the actual electorate dropped 15 percentage points, from 89 percent in 1976 to 74 percent in 2012.” The percentage of white working-class voters decreased by 26 points over the same period. “Future projections in the States of Change report suggest that the percentage of eligible white voters in the American electorate will drop to 46 percent by 2060,” he writes. A majority of non-white voters identify with the Democratic Party, while “increasingly more liberal social views among higher-educated white professionals” places them solidly in the Democratic camp as well.

The Democrats are the party of America’s future. The GOP, the “party of old, disillusioned white people,” is indeed in a slow death spiral. It has no one to blame except its politicians, who chose to betray the party’s noble founding principles in order to win elections.

John J. Dunphy of Godfrey is a poet and writer. He is the author of “From Christmas to Twelfth Night in Southern Illinois” and owns the Second Reading Book Shop in Alton.

By John J. Dunphy

Contributing columnist

John J. Dunphy of Godfrey is a poet and writer. He is the author of “From Christmas to Twelfth Night in Southern Illinois” and owns the Second Reading Book Shop in Alton.